The present invention generally relates to an electronically-identifiable bag and its recovery during transit. More specifically, the present invention relates to one or more systems and methods for group search-based lost bag search and recovery for an electronically-identifiable bag.
Transportation and travel industries routinely suffer from financial losses associated with lost travel bags and luggage. In the airline industry, for example, the annual losses related to lost travel bags are estimated to be over one billion US dollars. While insurance coverage on lost travel bags mitigates at least some financial damages associated with lost items during transit, permanently-lost items often result in lower customer satisfaction, a significant productivity loss, and angry emotions by travelers.
In general, there are several major causes of travel bag losses during transit in the travel industry. One cause is an erroneous destination bag tag sticker placement or an erroneous destination entry by a ticketing agent to a travel bag. For example, if numerous travelers are in line for a check-in counter, and travel bags have bunched up or placed out of order by customers or bag handlers, a destination bar code sticker or a related destination entry for a travel bag may be switched, mishandled, misplaced, or erroneously processed by the ticketing agent or other bag handlers. In this situation, the travel bag which has been mishandled, misplaced, or erroneously processed by the ticketing agent or other bag handlers is likely to be transported to an incorrect destination. Unless this travel bag has a manually-marked address label by a customer or has an identification sticker with an up-to-date traveler information, it may be difficult to search and recover the travel bag which arrived at the incorrect destination with the erroneous destination bar code bag tag sticker.
Furthermore, another cause of travel bag losses during transit in the travel industry is a destination bar code or another form of identification which is accidentally ripped apart or detached from a travel bag while being transported to an intended destination. Moreover, a baggage handler accidentally throwing a travel bag to a wrong conveyor belt or a cart in a baggage processing facility is another common cause of travel bag losses, because the travel bag placed on the wrong conveyor belt may be transported to an entirely different destination from an intended destination.
Due to a significant problem associated with travel bag losses, the travel industry has experimented with newer technologies such as radio frequency identification tags (RFID tags) to track travel bags. In theory, RFID tags can be read from a longer distance than from a bar code scanner, and each RFID tag may be able to store more information than a simple bar code-based destination sticker. Unfortunately, because many travel hubs, such as airports, train stations, hotels, and piers, do not have ubiquitous, pervasive, and standardized RFID infrastructure, the use of RFID tags alone has not been effective in reducing lost travel bags. Furthermore, the use of RFID tags has also been ineffective in search and recovery of these lost travel bags not only just because the standardized RFID infrastructure is lacking in many travel hubs, but also because most travel bags do not have easily-retrievable backup forms of identification in case of a misplaced or mishandled RFID tag.
Therefore, it may be advantageous to devise a system and/or a method which can systemically track a travel bag with an easily-retrievable and reliable form of information attached to the travel bag, regardless of human or machine error caused by a ticketing agent, a baggage handler, or a piece of transit equipment. Furthermore, it may be advantageous to disclose a system and/or a method which can organize and coordinate a lost bag search and recovery project effectively across multiple destinations and multiple individuals.